11. The Sword in the Stone

Just so you know, all your pubic hair ends up in the Bayou.

The Flexible Time Theory is the only explanation for the perfect impression Louis (a simple alligator who has never left the Bayou) does of Madam Mim (the witch who fought Merlin in medieval Britain, fourteen centuries earlier). The only logical explanation is that Madam Mim’s obsession with duelling compelled her to travel through time and face off against Mama Odie. This would mean Louis is thinking of Madam Mim and not Odie, when he describes a foreboding witch he’s seen in the Bayou.

12. The Fox and the Hound

If Merlin didn’t have the sense to make Wart a flying squirrel, he deserves a slap around his bearded face.

Similarly, the squirrel from The Fox and the Hound bears a striking similarity to Wart when he was a squirrel in The Sword in the Stone. Merlin proves he can travel through time when he returns from Bermuda wearing anachronistic sunglasses, so this could be Wart on another squirrel adventure; further proving how easily the veil of time is lifted in the Disneyverse. (Merlin’s Bermuda connection could also help to make sense of The Tarzan Theory.)

13. The Little Mermaid

What’s the point of being God of the oceans if you can’t have your own garish Mardi Gras float?

AsThe Princess and the Frogshows, magic has repercussions in the Disney world. Even contemporary settings like 20th Century New Orleans show an awareness of the old legends. Take, for example, this effigy ofThe Little Mermaid’s King Triton.

Nobody likes being caught masturbating.

And inAladdinGenie pulls Sebastian out of his bag of tricks. This could be an example of Genie’s ability to take objects out of time, but let’s consider for a moment the possibility thatAladdin is a connected time-period toThe Little Mermaid. Remember how we connected Aladdin to The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

14. Cinderella

Somebody had sprayed a really rude word on the Prince’s dog.

Well here’sCinderella’s King and Grand Duke attending Prince Eric’s wedding inThe Little Mermaid. (Bearing in mind the origins of these fairy tales, French dignitaries attending an event held by Danish royalty isn’t particularly surprising. See also: The Frozen Theory.)

Sometimes even wicked stepmothers need a hug.

And here’s a cameo by Cinderella’s wicked stepmother in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who ‘asks for love’ in the chapel. Presumably Lady Tremaine found it in Cinderella’s father, and his death is the reason she can’t bear to look at his daughter.

15. Peter Pan

You know what kids love in Disney movies? Reading.

So what bringsPeter Pan– the boy who never grew up – to observe a boring royal decree? The Darlings live in World War II-era Britain, yet here he is in the Once-Upon-A-Time ofCinderella. Maybe we can assume flying ‘second star to the right and straight on till morning’ can bring him to all sorts of time periods.

16. The Black Cauldron

Lighting a cave to guide stray children. That’s a tough gig.

It would explain how he comes to team up with Tinkerbell, who is seen helping light a cave in The Black Cauldron’s medieval setting. Clearly time is a difficult concept in the Disneyverse, especially when some of its stories seem to exist in fairy tales of their own. Let’s call this…

‘The Disney Princess Theory’

17. Tangled

‘As soon as I remember which book I hid a nail-file in we’re busting out of here.’

Tangledposes a problem as Rapunzel has the books ofBeauty and the Beast,The Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beautyin her library. We could assume this means all three are fiction (and therefore, by extension, so is every story we’ve so far mentioned), but the regular use of storybooks as framing devices in Walt Disney’s movies can also tell us that this is the way these characters perceive their lives. Their stories are so full of magic and excitement it’s no wonder they would be recorded in fairy-tale biographies for young women to pore over. This may be how the ‘Disney Princess’ archetype is repeated throughout time in the Disneyverse – as each generation read these tales, they too start pining for their version.

18. Sleeping Beauty

Spinning wheels are the must-have accessory for incarcerated minors this Fall.

Unfortunately this also means evil legal guardians can take inspiration in how to lock up their daughters. ClearlyTangled’s evil witch, Gothel took some pointers fromSleeping Beauty’s Maleficent when she locked Rapunzel in a tower with a spinning wheel.

19. Pinocchio

‘This Robin Williams persona is timeless.’

Pinocchio is another archetype who likes to appear in time-periods he has no business being in. Genie’s established time-bending ways may be easy enough to explain…

Warthogs don’t age as well as wooden puppets.

But here Pinocchio is again in Tangled. He could be an incredibly popular design for a puppet that appears in both Italy and Germany in the mid-19th Century, but why is Pumbaa there? The truth is more complicated, and lies much later in our list.

20. Oliver and Company

Somebody tell Aurora what a car is before this gets ugly.

First we bounce back to the 20th Century andOliver and Company, where we find the princess archetype again permeating the Disneyverse. Is this Aurora, Cinderella, or another Disney city girl looking to find her freedom?

Follow the link below to the final ten Disney movies – where I explain how all this is possible (and more):

19 Responses to 30 Disney Movies That Share A World – Part 2

I like the connections but the Darling’s lived in about 1904 London, in the original Peter Pan film. JM Barrie’s original text was published in 1904.
It wasn’t until Disney’s Peter Pan 2 that was set around WW2, even then the army vehicles depicted were too American. 😉

Peter Pan has an undetermined birth date because he had ovreard his paarents saying that they hate hi or something, and he left to find Neverland. He coud have been born WAY before that thingy you mentioned, but we’d never know!

If Louis saw the witch from the sword in the stone madam mim and mistook her for mama odie, that explains why he led Tirana an prince navine in the wrong direction. He was leading them to where he saw madam mim not the real mama odie. Then the bug ray comes along and takes them in the right direction to the real mama odie. When thy get there Louis asks I she’s definitely the witch who lives on a boat in the bayou. This disbelief that he shows proves that he thought madam mim was mama odie.

Couldn’t it just be that the artists of Disney have a sense of humor and like to throw irrelevant fillers in to the movies just to mess with people?? Or is that too far fetched for your conspiratorial mind!! Yes I can see that some thing probably took place at the same time and may have intertwinded in the Disney universe but I just think that if they where imperative to story they would have played a bigger part than a glimpse…. just sayin

Not sure if this has been brought up, but it is quite plausible to assume Madame Mim, from The Sword and the Stone, has a connection to Wonderland (the Mad Hatter & the Queen of Hearts). She is first seen in The Sword and the Stone playing cards. During that scene she calls herself ‘Mad’, sings that she can grow tall and grow small, talks about tea, and mentions she is mad about games as she turns into a cat that resembles the Cheshire Cat. Her personality would also fit perfectly in Wonderland.

13/19) Aladdin: i heard a better theory about aladdin that indicates it may take place many many years into the future, Genie was put away 10,000 years prior. yet he makes a ton of refrences to our present and past, so maybe he was put away in our time? after all, in the first moments a street vendor is trying to sell us tupperware, a coffee maker/fry maker/ hookah. and which would also explain why its so loosely like the book; because its not the book, its like how history repeats itself.
19) Pinnoccio: what if the ‘bar’ hes in, in tangled is the one from his movie?
20) Oliver and Company: that looks more like Anita from 101 Dalmatians to me…maybe before she met Roger she visited New York, the young woman is holding a suitcase after all, and the princesses didnt have suitcases, they had trunks.

Would love to be wrong here, but I think it’s impossible to connect “Little Mermaid” to “Frozen” when Rapunzel has “The Little Mermaid” book in “Tangled”. If Elsa’s parents ship sank en route to Rapunzel’s wedding, there’s no way it could also be “The Little Mermaid” ship. That would put “Little Mermaid” events after the events in “Tangled”; so, Rapunzel couldn’t have a copy of the book in her tower.